I have been a fan of Arnold Shwarzenegger ever since his defining role in The Terminator in 1984. The role of an emotionless cyborg (a machine designed to look human) was perfectly matched to his acting skills. In that role he was able to deliver memorable lines that betrayed no passion or caring only a haunting promise/threat "I'll be baack."
In Terminator, Skynet is created in 2029 because Humans, apparently realizing that they could not trust other humans, decided to give control of world communications to an artificial intelligence that would presumably watch over the world and keep humans from killing each other. But, Skynet decides that humans are not to be trusted so the machines set about to kill-off the human race.
A stubborn group of human rebels is led by John Connor. The machines figure out that if you could go back in history to 1984, you could kill John Connors' mother before she gives birth, and that would eliminate the would-be leader of the resistance.
When the rebels find out about the plan they send back their own guy to interfere with the terminator's relentless pursuit of Sarah. Kyle (the good guy from the future) and Sarah have intercourse in the course of the escaping and hiding, so the plot becomes interesting when we realize that Sarah is pregnant by John's friend from the future.
Unless you are a fan of science fiction where time travel is fairly common, maybe it is a stretch to get your mind around the concepts, and the contradictions of theoretical time travel. The machines should have known that sending the Terminator back was futile, because the present time for them was already the result of the past; thus you can't really change things.
It's really much easier to just go with the flow of the story - as they say in poetry "the willing suspension of disbelief."
(some day it might be interesting to do an analysis of other time travel stories to compare different depictions about the way actions can effect the space time continuum.)
So, Why we are Doomed
Recently the US Air Force guys in charge fired or demoted dozens of high ranked officers whose jobs were to oversee nuclear safety. It turns out that the job is boring. These guys were sleeping on the job, partying to excess and cheating on exams that tested their knowledge of safety precautions.The breadth of the problem is shocking, especially in the face of so many worldwide terrorist groups who would do most anything to get their hands on some nuclear explosives.
It brought home the realization that humans cannot be trusted to do boring jobs. This is why we design machines that will do them without complaint.
You see where I am going here, right? It is only a matter of time that someone decides to turn on Skynet and we -- nasty brutish and short humans -- end up-being exterminated by our own Roombas.
